This application claims the priority of Dutch Patent Application No. 1005914 filed Apr. 28, 1997, which is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to a device for storing and/or treating chemicals, comprising a casing which is made of glass and is provided with a receiving cavity for storing chemicals therein.
Devices for storing and/or treating chemicals are utilized in bulk quantities by the chemical industry, research laboratories, medical laboratories and like institutes. The known devices include, for instance, sampling tubes as described in Dutch patent application NL-A-1003492, a sample bottle or vial, a test tube or blood tube, a Petri dish, and HPLC column, or like devices comprising a glass casing provided with a receiving cavity for storing chemicals therein.
Often, it is a problem to record what is stored in a known device and under what conditions storage occurred. Thus, it happens regularly in hospitals that tubes of blood are mixed up and so the results of the blood test are linked with the wrong patient. With sampling tubes that are used specifically for taking samples from gases, such as, for instance, the atmosphere, it is necessary to record under what conditions the samples were taken. Pressure, temperature, air humidity and like data are of direct influence on the concentrations of the samples that are taken. Since these sampling activities often take place in the absence of attendant personnel, there is no opportunity of registering this kind of data, so that other solutions to resolve these problems have been realized. In sampling the atmosphere, sometimes use is made of a special pump which keeps the pressure, temperature, and humidity of the air which is passed through the sampling tube at a constant value. Such a pump is particularly costly and would not be necessary if the data of the atmospheric pressure, the air humidity, the temperature and the like were known. In other absorption processes, too, such data play an important role. In the case of, for instance, a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) column, keeping record of the measurements performed is a labor-intensive job which can easily lead to errors.
The object of the invention is to provide a device of the type defined in the opening paragraph hereof, without the above-mentioned drawbacks. To that end, according to the invention, the device is characterized in that it comprises a transponder including a memory, the transponder being arranged in the device such that it cannot be affected by the chemicals. The transponder can be designed in a variety of ways. Thus, it can be provided with a memory in which only a fixed number is stored. The data to be stored in relation to the chemicals received in a given device are stored in a central computer with reference to the identification number stored in the transponder.
Such a solution is practical in particular when the location where the chemicals are received in the receiving cavity of the casing of the device is in the proximity of the central computer in which the data of interest are stored. There are many applications, however, where measurement occurs remote from a central computer and hence no freely available memory for storing these data is present. In that case, according to a further elaboration of the invention, it is particularly favorable when the transponder is provided with programmable memory. In that case, data observed in situ can be stored in the memory of the transponder and read out by a central computer at a later time. Optionally, the transponder can contain control data on the basis of which processing apparatus can be driven.
According to a further elaboration of the invention, the transponder is melted-in in a closed glass housing which constitutes an inseparable part of the device. Owing to the presence of the glass housing, such a transponder cannot be contaminated or destroyed by the chemicals received in the receiving cavity of the device.
Further elaborations of the invention are described in the subclaims and will hereinafter be further clarified with reference to the drawing, on the basis of a number of exemplary embodiments.